Yesterday I heard a kinda weird term:
“Nerd rage”
What is nerd rage?
Well, here’s an example:
Right now you have a LOT of comic book movies appearing and in development. Many are extremely good (i.e. the recent Batman movies, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man movies, etc)… and some have completely farted on the source material from which they were derived (like GI Joe, Catwoman, Elektra, etc) and turned them into the worst movies you can possibly imagine.
In these bad cases, you get “nerd rage.”
Angry fanboys fuming at this castration of their childhood heroes.
Another example is the “Nortongate” fiasco.
This is a spiff between actor Ed Norton and Marvel studios.
Ed Norton played Bruce Banner in the 2008 movie The Incredible Hulk (a fanboy favorite). And people were hoping he’d return for the upcoming “Avengers” movie, which will feature all the main characters in all of Marvel’s current movie roster, and put them together on screen.
This has NEVER been done before.
And, it may never happen again.
Well, guess what?
Marvel fired Norton in early July.
Marvel’s explanation was extremely low class, too.
(As well as blatantly insulting to the fandom).
And thus, we had some SERIOUS nerd rage happening!
Literally thousands of people contacted Marvel Comics begging, pleading and even threatening them to bring Ed Norton back. (Not surprisingly, Marvel ignored the fans.)
Anyway, there’s a big marketing lesson here:
The POWER of a fan base.
A loyal band of your own fanboys (and nerd girls) who can’t wait to buy from you, and will stand up for you, fight for you and even go down swinging for you.
Ed Norton’s got a fan base like that.
And so do a lot of other celebrities.
Do you?
If not, make it a priority to build one.
It’s one of the most profitable things you can do.
Ben Settle
P.S. One of the best (and easiest) ways to build a fan base is with email (if done right). If you’re interested in learning how, I’m re-releasing Street-Smart Email in a couple weeks probably, and when I do I’m giving a $200 discount on its re-lauch.
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